Verbal Worries

This past weekend I had planned on doing some extra practice questions along with taking a full length test. Due to some immediate family needs, I didnt get a chance to even touch the GMAT yesterday. Between taking a practice test and doing more practice questions from the OG, I decided on the latter and tried to keep the breakdown of the questions similar to a full length test. Essentially I did 42 Verbal and 37 Quantitative questions roughly broken up equally into the SC, RC, PS, DS and CR.

So far I have completed about a fifth of the OG questions (300 or so in total or 60 from each section), and the Quantitative seems to be well under control except for the ocassional twister. Verbal continues to be more of a worry with a hit rate of about 70-75% on an average. On today's practice set, I got 34/41 in Verbal and 36/37 in Quantitative. I was also thinking, perhaps the tougher sets are yet to come given that I am only in the 60s right now. That underlines my need to improve on Verbal even more.

Hopefully with more practice this week, I will continue to gain confidence on Verbal.

Kaplan rubs it in

As part of my GMAT prep plan dictates that I take 2 to 3 full length practice tests a week in addition to working on other questions, I took another full length test today, this one from Kaplan. I am not sure if the Kaplan tests are actually more difficult or Kaplan just has a stringent grading system. Having read on so many other blogs that Kaplan scores are comparatively on the lower side, I wasn't too disheartned to see the 670 that I got today.

However, on closer examination of the scores, I found that I got 31 right out of 37 in the Quantitative section (6 mistakes) and 35 right out of 41 in the Verbal section (6 mistakes). That accounted for a scaled score of 41 on Quantitative and 40 on Verbal. This in is contrast with Powerprep or GMAT Prep where I got more questions wrong and yet scored higher (700 and 710 respectively). Since all questions on the GMAT are not counted towards your score as some of them are trial questions, it is possible that PP and GMAT Prep are structured in a way to somehow account for that, I dont know.

What is clear though that in order to break the 700 mark on Kaplan, there is scope for only 2-3 errors in each section. I didnt find any section on the Kaplan test to be particularly difficult, they were at par with any other test I have taken so far in terms of difficulty, maybe 1 or 2 questions made me think a little harder and took a bit longer to answer.

Anyhow, now that 1 full length test is out of the way, its back to OG for today's quota of questions.

End of Week 1

Today was more OG day, I did 15 questions from each section except for RC, from which I did 6, adding up to a total of 66 questions. I got all the 6 RC questions right and atleast 1 question wrong from each of the other 4 sections. The RC passage (I did only 1) was relatively easy, related to excavation of artifacts in Cyprus and the impact of open market trading on illegal diggings. I somehow find it easier to tackle science/history passages than the ones which involve trade unions and labor laws.

Anyhow, coming back to the questions, I made some silly errors in Data Insufficiency just because I didnt read what was being asked. Focus and stamina over a 3 hour period on the GMAT is key and I need to sustain that. I caught myself looking at the watch twice today, wondering when my 2 hour study time would end.

With those 2 hours also ended my first week of GMAT preps. Its been a satisfactory first week and I did have fun everyday with the practice questions but I have ways to go. Its been fun reading up on schools, other blogs (Dave, Beat the GMAT, Accepted.com and others), thinking about potential essay content for schools, debating which recommenders to use and pondering over personal and career goals.

Overall a good close to week 1 and now onto week 2!

Officially on The Official Guide

Today I started working with The Official Guide, 10th edition and I am almost about to end week 1 of my GMAT preparation. The initial questions looked familiar from Powerprep and I knew that, having read this blog. Today was an easy day because 1) the early questions on OG are relatively easier than the later ones and 2) because I had come across some of those questions earlier. So my near perfect results on the OG today probably is not of much consequence but it felt nice to hit OG from question 1.

I also had a chance to read through some Probability and Permutation/Combination theory stuff during my lunch hour at work and do a couple of quick practice questions just to test the concepts. Also went through the Kaplan Reading Comprehension strategy. Overall, a good day GMAT wise but looking forward to more real/tougher questions from the OG this week.

I'd still be a 600

This weekend was productive in terms of my GMAT preparation. I bid adieu to Sentence Correction finally and will start with Reading Comprehension next. Although I am a day late to start Reading Comprehension, I feel good about gaining some degree of confidence on Sentence Correction. All in all I did about 110 practice SC questions and also took another full length practice test (GMAT Prep - sorry I mentioned Kaplan before) and did decently okay on it (710 Q 48 V 40), although during the test I didnt think I would cross even 600; it seemed so hard and felt like I was guessing on many questions. I hope I retain the same guessing skills on GMAT day.

I was also surprised to note that the Quantitative section seemed to be much harder than the Verbal, normally its the other way round. For the first time, I wasent able to finish the Quantitative section and had to randomly guess the last 3 questions. As usual, Reading Comprehension bothered me yet again and it felt like I would learn all about prehistoric dinosaur bones, comets hitting the earth, socio-economic theories of 17th century trade unions in Britain and the role of women in the early 20th century american labor unions not to forget how positrons bounce around each other and the atom is split; all in those 75 minutes of Verbal torture.

After this, I'd almost like to think that my GMAT score is my IQ level, no matter how badly I did, I'd still be a 600!

Day 4 Summary

This is my fourth day into the GMAT prep and the momentum has been good and positive. Ofcourse 4 days is a very small timeframe to measure anything, I just hope I can sustain it for the next 8 weeks or so as I will be hitting the Round 1 deadlines.

I met my daily goal of studying for 1 hr and doing 30 practice questions, infact I did 50 Sentence Correction questions from Powerprep and Kaplan and got 42 of them right. More than the fact that I got 8 wrong, what worried me was the fact that I didnt agree with some of the explanations to the right answers as given by Kaplan. So it boils down to training myself more the ETS way and how they think what is right on the GMAT, rather than what my conventional English grammar knowledge suggests. I have gone through the theory behind Sentence Correction both from Kaplan and Princeton review (found the latter easier to follow) and today is my last day on Sentence Correction questions before I move on to the next topic, Reading Comprehension.

I admit, I dread this the most; Reading Comprehension is like a nightmare to me and can actually put me to sleep during a test. Its my weakest spot and I need to work the most on this.

Let's see if my love for RC improves after 3 days.

Keeping it Simple

This whole application process for me has to revolve around "making the maximum impact with minimum effort." When I say minimum, I mean the maximum possible in the time I have available, which is not a lot.

I came across atleast 10 different guide books and plenty of sites related to the GMAT and I cant possibly go through each one of them even though I would have loved to. So on the "Keeping it Simple" philosophy, I started with the GMAT. I have decided to focus my GMAT efforts only on Kaplan 2005 (with cd), Princeton Review 2005 (with cd), Gmat800 and The Official Guide (10th edition).

I have worked my study plan to do atleast 1 hour of studying everyday on one topic only and do atleast 30 practice questions on that topic. I will do this for 3 days and move on to the next topic. In parallel, I will take a full time test every 3 days (2 a week). The key right now is to keep it very focussed and streamlined and thats what I am going to do.

P.S. Studied the SC section from PR and did soem practice questions from PR. Then took the SC test on Powerprep and got 15/22 (68%).

Tackling the GMAT

I need to get cracking on the GMAT right away and I need to take the exam quick and do well in my first attempt. Having said that, its not going to be a cakewalk. Its been years since I have done much quantitative work (my job doesnt require me to) and GMAT specific grammar and verbal expertise are not my strengths either. Everyday reading and taking 2-3 tests a week is the plan at the moment. The challenge lies in my highly intense work schedule and my need to parallely research out schools, given the time constraints that I have imposed on myself.

I decided to take an ETS from Powerprep test just to gauge where I stand even before I start preparing. I actually did pretty well for my first test (700 Q48 V38) but believe it was more of a fluke. I know for a fact that I need to work hard on the verbal specially and I cant consistently score the same on other practice tests right now. My target score is 720 or above as I believe the other elements of the application make the difference beyond that point. I have the Kaplan Guide, Princeton Review, GMAT 800 (also by Kaplan), Arco, Peterson's, Barrons and The Official Guide. Realistically I wont be able to go through all these books as I plan to take the GMAT in 4-5 weeks time (if I am going to make any Round 1 deadline).

Its looking like a very tough 4 weeks ahead!

Late in the game

I know people have already taken their GMAT, arranged for their transcripts, probably talked to their recommenders and are working on their initial essay drafts. My decision to apply for Fall 2006 was rather immediate, taken over the last 3-4 days. I had started preparing with the aim of applying for Fall 2007 and thought I would do my homework right by starting the game early on. However, a few personal factors and aniticipating progress at work over the next 2 years, it feels like now is the right time and I should just do it a year earlier.

The bad news is that I have yet to take the GMAT for which I have just started to study, have yet to do research on any of the schools that I want to apply to, have no recommenders lined up and am pretty late in the game now. The good news is that I am up for the challenge, I think it will be a lot of fun, I am motivated and fired up and think I have a pretty good story to share with the admissions committee about my professional and personal goals and achievements so far.

This is my first post and I prefer to keep myself anonymous for the time being. There is a lot to be done to make any sort of an impact in the highly competitive b-school admissions process. At the end of the day, I am going to have fun with it and do the best possible. Good luck to you all!